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from Planning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
There are many different forms of assessment, ranging from the formal examination to simple observation. Some of the most effective ways to assess information literacy are discussed as separate tips in this book. It is important to remember that assessment is an essential part of the learning experience as it is the most effective way of ensuring that your learners actually learn what you have been teaching them. Assessed tasks or activities are often the most effective way that learners start to internalize and understand the information with which they have been provided, or to put it another way, assessment turns information into personal knowledge.
Assessment is not always about exams and tests. Instead, think of it as a catch-all description for the process of letting the learners try out and demonstrate what they have learnt.
When planning assessment ask yourself three questions:
• What do I want to measure?
• Is this the best way to assess?
• Is what I am testing important or significant?
When planning your teaching, you need to think about how to check that the learning outcomes have been achieved. This can be done in a variety of ways, but you need to link your aims, objectives and learning outcomes to the assessment to make it most effective.
There are different kinds of assessment:
• Summative assessment takes place at the conclusion of the learning experience.
• Formative assessment takes place during the learning experience and can be something as simple as asking your learners to do a task and giving them feedback while they are working on it.
• Diagnostic assessment takes place prior to your sessions and can be used to assess existing knowledge and ability to inform your teaching and to benchmark learning.
Remember that all assessment tasks and activities should have the following five qualities:
1 Validity
Assessment should test the learning outcomes. It is also good practice to select tasks relevant and appropriate to the process. So, for example, setting a bibliography task would be a good activity for students needing to demonstrate literature searching, reviewing, and referencing skills, but perhaps not a suitable activity for family historians who would rather demonstrate their searching skills by drawing up a genealogy. This can be quite difficult to achieve as after all, it can be easier to test recall (‘Do you know how many books you can borrow?’) via a quiz than understanding.
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